1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for correcting typing errors according to character layout positions on a keyboard to improve input accuracy and automatically amend characters that have been input as desired.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Advances of computer technology have a growing impact to people's life. New types of input methods have been constantly developed and introduced (such as voice input, handwriting recognition input and the like). However the input interface that can most meet human requirements still is the computer keyboard. The conventional computer keyboard is originated from the earlier typewriter. Take into account of the size of human fingers, the key has to be formed in a sufficient size to avoid the neighboring keys from being mistakenly hit when each key depressing is made. Hence trying to shrink the computer keyboard encounters practical problems. Moreover, with the computer becomes more powerful and new functions being constantly developed, the number of keys has already much greater than the traditional typewriter, and the number is still growing.
As the number of keys grows, the size of the computer keyboard also increases. Nowadays a computer keyboard with fully loaded functions could have a size covering all the usable area of an entire office desk. It occupies a great deal of space. In order to allow the fingers to reach all the keys and prevent the palms from mistakenly touching other keys, users often have to keep their two palms in the air during typing. This makes the arms and fingers easily fatigued after working for a period of time. Operation speed also slows down.
To remedy the aforesaid disadvantages, the Applicant has submitted a patent application No. 94143145 which integrates a plurality of keys operable by one finger into one key to reduce the number of keys, thus the number of keys can be reduced to shrink the keyboard. However, if the touch panel on the keys is divided into segments of too small size, the segment representing each character also is small. This causes decrease of typing accuracy, especially for the fast speed typists. On the other hand, maintaining a bigger size contradicts the objective of shrinking the keyboard. Moreover, non-professional typists often encounter a problem, namely they have to frequently lower their heads to look at the keyboard to find out or confirm the character key to be entered, and also have to raise the heads to look at the screen to confirm the correctness of the character being entered. This is especially troublesome when switching of two or more different languages is involved, such as simultaneously entering Japanese, Chinese and English. As the same key can represent English, Japanese or Chinese in different conditions, and users have to frequently lower the heads to look at the keyboard. It could happen that after the users having typed a string of characters and raise the heads to look at the screen, and find out that the entered characters are not the desired ones. Furthermore, the present computer key equipped with the newest touch panel can be greatly shrunk to carrying easier. The depressible range of each key that represents one character also decreases. The interval between the keys is not very significant. Hence the problem of mistakenly hitting the neighboring keys easily occurs. All this affects data entry speed and accuracy.